Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans

Making It 'Write'

Writing can be therapeutic, especially in times of sadness.

Eve Crawford Peyton

That's me at age 7.

My last blog (oh, the weather, so crazy!) felt a lot like phoning it in, and it was to some extent. If I’m being totally honest, I’m struggling a little bit lately. Not in my actual day-to-day life – I am not failing at work or neglecting my family. I am still making breakfasts and pouring milk and wiping noses and folding clothes and kissing my husband and inserting and deleting commas as needed on a professional basis; I am still completely functional and, by and large, happy. But I live so much in my head, and there, to some extent, I am struggling lately.

I once read in some story about James Thurber that his wife (which one I don’t know) would often elbow him at cocktail parties and say, “Thurber! You’re writing again!” I am no James Thurber, God knows, but I still identified with that a lot.

Writing is how I process the world around me, and even if I don’t actually typeset it, I am writing a narrative in my brain pretty much all the time. And the significant events, especially the tragic ones, well, I write about those the most because I need to make sense of them the most.

If you met me casually, at a party or a PTA meeting, I wouldn’t mention my dead siblings or my miscarriage or my divorce. I would tell you that I was an only child (because I really was raised that way), that I have two incredible daughters and a terrific stepson (because I do), that my husband is great and my ex-husband and I are friendly (because he is and we are). I wouldn’t lie, in other words, but I would give you the easy-listening version of the truth. No one wants to be burdened with other people’s complicated lives in social situations; I know that.

And no one wants to read about it all the time either. When I was in a writing class in college, I wrote something about my brother’s death, and the professor made a big deal about it, about how good it was, how brave, how honest. As we walked out of the classroom, my biggest rival muttered just loud enough for me to hear, “Ugh, I wish I had a dead brother.” I felt stung, largely because she was right. Writing about my brother’s death was necessary for me; it was therapeutic; but it was also, at times, just so easy. It was rich material, and I just kept going back to the well.

Ever since that day, I have tried to be more conscious of trotting out my “dead brother” (and now my dead sister) whenever I need something to write about. I still write about it – because I have to – but I try not to do it in really attenuated ways. Just as gifted actors can take even the smallest roles and make them their own, we learned in journalism school that good writers need to be able to write about the mundane in exciting ways. Good journalists need to be able to write about an uneventful school board meeting with the same passion they’d use to cover a political scandal. You make the stories; you don’t let the stories make you. I get that. I agree with it. I try to live up to it.

All that said, however, I am finding myself, 25 years out, still struggling with the loss of my brother at such a young age and still writing about it. While the adults grieved harder – if one can quantify such a thing – than I did at age 7, I have grieved longer because I have had to grieve in increments as my maturity caught up to the situation. I thought the last real milestone would be when I turned 29, the age my brother was when he died, but no.

Ruby at age 7.

Ruby is now 7, and if anything, that is affecting me even more – for several reasons. Seven was such a big year for me, the clear before-and-after line in my childhood, and I sometimes have to remind myself that I was capable of very big feelings and very complex thoughts at that age – and thus, Ruby is, too. As a mom, I want to see 7 as a simple age, her problems as small and easy to fix, but I can recall, so clearly, what it felt like to be 7, and it definitely didn’t feel simple. I have an urge to protect her from everything, and yet I know from my own experience that I can’t, that life is going to happen to her and all I can do is stand by her.

Then, too, on a completely immature level, watching Ruby makes me feel sorry for my 7-year-old self. She was recently around a friend of mine who had had too much to drink, and she was rightfully bewildered. By the time I was 7, I was well beyond bewilderment. I knew exactly what was going on when my brother was drunk, and it made me furious, and I also had some idea in my head, which I kept secret from everyone, that maybe I and I alone could fix him. Remembering all of that makes me sad for 7-year-old me, makes me want to go back now and whisper, “You can’t fix it; no one can.” Other people would have told me just that, had I shared my secret conviction with them, but I didn’t. It also makes me wonder how many secrets Ruby might have hugged close to her heart, how much responsibility she might be putting on herself. And it is a reminder of just how much of age 7 still really is firmly in the realm of magical thinking.

It all hit home recently after Mrs. Foxworth died. Ruby suddenly was scared to be alone in her bedroom, in the bathroom, on the porch.

“What is going on?” I asked her, annoyed. “You are 7 years old, Ruby Grace! What are you so afraid of all of a sudden?!”

And then it hit me. It came rushing back to me in absolute vivid color. “Oh,” I said quietly. “Oh. Are you … Ruby, are you scared of her ghost? That she’s going to come and take you back with her to heaven?”

She nodded at me, her eyes huge and greeny-gray. And I remembered the chaotic days after my brother’s death, remembered that fear, as I hovered near my mom at all times, that if I stepped out of her sight my brother’s spirit might somehow come and take me away. After all, everyone said I was his favorite thing in the world. I knew, even at age 7, that it was silly; I don’t think I ever told my mom or anyone else. But I believed it anyway, in some way I couldn’t articulate and didn’t want to admit.

As it all came back to me, I stopped yelling, stopped being annoyed, and knelt down and gave Ruby a hug – and not to get too hokey or new-agey, but it felt a bit like giving my 7-year-old self a hug, too.

So I’m struggling these days, a little bit, but the struggle is part of the healing, and the healing is ongoing.

Writing is therapy for me in many ways, but to be perfectly honest, so is parenting.

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Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans

about

Eve is further proof, if any is needed, that New Orleans girls can never escape the city. After living here since the age of 3 and graduating from Ben Franklin High School, Eve moved to Columbia, Mo., where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism and became truly, unhealthily obsessed with grammar.She had originally intended to strike out to New York City and work in the cutthroat magazine industry there, but after Katrina, Eve felt a strong pull to return home, to her roots, her family, her waterlogged and struggling city – and a much more forgiving work atmosphere that would allow her to skip a routine of everyday makeup and size 0 designer label business suits and enjoy the occasional cocktail or three with an absurdly fattening lunch. She moved back home in January 2008 and lives in Mid-City with her two daughters, Ruby and Georgia; her stepson, Elliot; and her husband, Robert Peyton.Eve blogs about the joys and struggles of living in post-Katrina New Orleans, the unique problems and delights of raising a child in such a diverse and challenging city – including her experiences with the public education system – and her always entertaining and extremely colorful family.Eve has won numerous writing awards, including the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal, the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for column-writing and Press Club of New Orleans awards for her Editor’s Note in New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and for this blog, most recently winning the award for "Best Feature Affiliated Blog."She welcomes comments, advice, empty flattery, recipes, drink invitations and – most especially – grammatical or linguistic debates.